What I Would Tell My 10-Years-Younger Self Today

Slow your roll, youngblood. You’ve got time.

Stop rushing and pushing like you’re running out of it.

BUT…

I guess as a woman, you kind of are.

And therein lies the problem.

I spent so much of my younger life frantically afraid that I was going to miss my opportunity for everything I wanted. I was always working toward something, building something, planning something, trying to get somewhere. I wish I could go back and tell myself to enjoy the process a little more.

Then again, there is a very real possibility that without that feeling of urgency, I would have wasted a lot more time.

So maybe the advice isn’t slow down.

Maybe it’s make it count.

Do the Big Things While You Can

Take my house.

I bought my little place in Tennessee years ago and eventually undertook this enormous project of turning it into what I wanted it to be. Looking back now, I don’t know that I could tackle that same project at this stage of my life—with a house full of kids, a full-ish-time job, a music career, and approximately 700 other things requiring my attention at any given moment.

There are things I did in my 20s because I had a freedom I didn’t even realize was freedom at the time.

So if there is something you really want to do—and I mean really, really want to do—there’s something to be said for doing it in your 20s.

Start the business, make the record, buy the plane ticket, build the house, move somewhere weird, learn the thing, take the risk.

Because then the 30s march in and, all of a sudden, life happens.

Obviously this isn’t everyone’s story. There are women who have babies at 22 and women who have them at 42. There are women who don’t want children at all. There is no universal timeline.

But if—and this is the big IF—you want children, and you took longer than average to grow up like I did, the math starts getting real in your 30s.

I knew early on that I wasn’t ready for kids in my 20s, and I was barely ready in my 30s.

And to the gals who had their families at 20: good for you. You’re gonna be a hot grandma while I’m in a walker, mkay?

But that wasn’t going to be my story.

For me, the 30s became the baby decade. If you want a couple of kids with some space between them, we’re realistically talking about a pretty substantial chunk of your 30s spent pregnant, postpartum, nursing, sleep deprived, raising babies and toddlers, or recovering from all of the above.

Then you wake up just shy of 40 wondering why you aren’t more rested after the ten-year coma you’ve apparently been in.

Women Were Told Something Weird About Wanting Families

I think this is particularly complicated for women who are artists.

Women in music have been told forever that we have to put the career first.

And listen, I’m all about chasing the dream.

Build your career. Make your own money. Have goals. Have aspirations. Be financially independent. Make something you’re proud of. Don’t sit around waiting for somebody else to build your life for you.

But somewhere along the way, I think a lot of us absorbed another message along with that one: that simply wanting children was somehow a frivolous, old-fashioned notion.

That motherhood made you less ambitious, less interesting, less serious about your career, that having a baby would tank everything you’d worked for.

That wanting a husband and children and a home was almost a dirty little wish you weren’t supposed to say out loud if you also wanted to be perceived as a serious artist or an independent woman.

And I don’t buy that.

How can one of the oldest human desires—to love, nurture, belong, build a family and leave something behind—be treated so flippantly?

There are women who don’t want children, and that is completely valid.

But there are also women who do.

And they shouldn’t have to apologize for that either.

I think about songs Kelsea Ballerini has written over the years—first wrestling with a marriage where she and her husband weren’t on the same page about settling down and having children, and only 3 years later writing from a completely different place in life, wondering about marriage and motherhood and whether there was still time for her.

And it makes me wonder:

What if we collectively stopped acting like women have to choose one life forever?

What if it could be:

This now. That later.

You Can Have It All. Just Not All at Once.

My biggest blindside was probably that I foolishly assumed kids would be easier than they are.

Maybe some are. Mine, however, came feral. I can almost pet them now, but it’s taken a long time.

As girls of the 80/90/s, we were force fed this idea that YOU CAN HAVE IT ALL.

And I actually think that’s true. But somebody forgot the second half of the sentence:

You can have it all. You just can’t have all of it at the same time.

There are seasons when something has to go on the back burner because something else needs you more.

There are seasons when the career takes off.

There are seasons when you’re making peanut butter sandwiches and wiping butts.

There are seasons when you’re traveling.

There are seasons when leaving the house feels like an expedition requiring six pack mules and a Sherpa.

There are seasons when you’re creating constantly.

And there are seasons when you’re simply trying to keep everybody alive until bedtime.

Putting something on the back burner doesn’t mean you’ve killed it.

You can come back, you can reinvent it.

You can discover that the thing you thought you wanted at 29 isn’t quite the thing you want at 39.

And sometimes life takes shape in a completely different way than you expected.

I knew I wanted a family, I knew I wanted financial independence, I knew I wanted an artistic life and a music career.

And I knew I wanted time to travel—to see things, experience the life I was living, and not merely exist to manage it.

My life has definitely ended up looking different than I expected.

I’ve asked God, on numerous occasions:

WHYYYYYYYYY?

But I can also look back now and see that He took a lot of my messes and cleaned them up pretty nicely.

The dream looks a little different than it did in my spiral-bound graph-paper notebook ten years ago.

But I’m absolutely loving this wild ride and at this point, I can’t imagine my life being even a little different.

Stop Negotiating Yourself Out of What You Actually Want

This might be the biggest thing I’d tell my younger self:

Don’t talk yourself into wanting something you don’t actually want.

I learned this lesson with a camper.

Traveling with my kids has always been important to me. I want to see the parks. I want road trips. I want adventures. I want them to remember waking up somewhere beautiful and having absolutely no idea what we’re going to find that day.

My dream was a camper van.

Unfortunately, have you SEEN what camper vans cost?

I didn’t have $150,000 lying around to buy one of those gorgeous all-inclusive rigs, so I decided I was being impractical.

I told myself I didn’t need a camper van.

I could get a trailer.

So I found the cutest little pull-behind trailer. It was small enough that my minivan could just barely pull it, and it only cost about $12,000.

Perfect!

This was basically the same thing!

Except for one tiny problem:

I HATE TRAILERS.

I hate hitching them.

I hate backing them up.

I hate towing them.

I hate not being able to just climb into the driver’s seat and drive away if I’m somewhere alone with my kids and something feels wrong.

I HATE TRAILERS.

But I told myself I could learn.

I can do anything!

Which is technically true, but sometimes I can do anything is a terrible reason to do something you have absolutely no desire to do.

On my very first trip pulling that trailer, I apparently hadn’t gotten it completely hitched down properly.

And somewhere on a four-lane highway in Iowa…

I dropped the trailer.

The safety chains held, thank God, but when it came loose, the tongue punched a hole straight through the back hatch of my minivan.

I pulled over and sat there feeling like the biggest fool in the history of recreational vehicles.

Two incredibly kind guys stopped and literally lifted the trailer and got it properly back onto the hitch for me.

I still appreciate you guys, wherever you are.

But I made a decision right there on the side of that Iowa highway.

Maybe I could become great at towing someday.

But I didn’t want to.

And I certainly wasn’t going to jeopardize my family trying to prove that I could master something I didn’t even want in the first place.

So I sold the dang thing.

Thankfully it was cute and kind of rare, so I didn’t lose any money.

And I learned an extremely valuable lesson:

Don’t try to talk yourself into something you don’t want just because it’s a more practical version of what you do want.

Eventually, I bought my Ford Transit and converted it into a camper.

Is it one of those fancy $150,000 all-inclusive camper vans?

Nope.

But it cost about half as much, and it gives me the things I actually wanted.

And THAT was the point.

Want What You Want

I think I spent a lot of my life bargaining with myself.

Maybe I don’t need that.

Maybe this is good enough.

Maybe that dream is unrealistic.

Maybe wanting that makes me selfish.

Maybe I’m asking too much.

Maybe I should be satisfied with this other version that’s almost right.

And strangely, it wasn’t until fairly recently that I gave myself permission to say:

No. I want what I want.

That doesn’t mean I’m entitled to get everything I want.

It doesn’t mean God owes me the exact life I’ve imagined.

It doesn’t mean I bankrupt myself buying a camper van because I made a vision board.

It simply means I can stop lying to myself about what I actually want.

I can pursue it.

I can work toward it.

I can pray about it.

I can change my mind about it.

I can accept that it might arrive in a form I never expected.

But I don’t have to apologize for wanting it.

So maybe that’s what I would tell my younger self.

Slow your roll, youngblood.

But don’t waste your time.

Pursue what you want with passion.

Build things while you have the freedom to build them.

Understand that life comes in seasons, and don’t panic when one dream has to sit quietly while another one takes center stage.

If you want children, let yourself want children.

If you want a career, let yourself want a career.

If you want both, stop believing that makes you confused or greedy.

If you want adventure, go find it.

If you want the camper van, for the love of God, do not buy the trailer.

Let go and let God.

And stop bargaining for a lesser life because the life you actually want feels too big, too expensive, too complicated, too unconventional, too feminine, too ambitious, or too much.

Don’t apologize for your dreams, whatever they are.

Want what you want without permission.

Work for it.

Make room for it.

Let it change.

And for heaven’s sake, enjoy the ride.